U.S.E. Alien Cyclops seatpost

The clamping mechanism does not inspire confidence. I've heard of them breaking but USE will send replacement parts either cheap or free. I haven't had the pleasure of testing this out, yet. I'm about 145 lbs so I'm probably not in danger of breaking it from putting my weight onto it.

A better weight to price seatpost, if you can find one, would be an older American Classic seatpost. It's a bit heavier than the USE but I've bought one for about 1/4 the price of my USE.

I'm also 175 lbs, have used the carbon USE alien seatpost 27.2mm for 1 full season. I had to spend the extra bucks to get a cyclops clamp that accommodates 8mm carbon rails as I'm using it with a SLR Kit Carbonio saddle. Just make sure you torque the bolt using a good and calibrated torque wrench to the instruction sheet provided with the seatpost.

Some say the seatpost is hard to adjust. I disagree. Overall I say it's a good seatpost. It is not the lightest, but atleast it supports the rails of the saddles better than the KCNC/New Ultimate/Tune style seat posts.

Word of advice. Skip on the stupid carbon SLR saddle from Selle Italia. It is at most 6g lighter than a normal SLR, but 100 USD more. Claimed 125g actually came to 141g for my saddle. A SLR Ti railed is usually 135g claimed and about 147g heavy.

Back to the topic at hand, I have a USE Alien on my road bike and the post is ok. It takes time to adjust the angle compared to other designs because it changes as you tighten the bolt and then you have to open it up again, adjust and repeat until you get it, but once it's set it seems pretty solid. There are other better posts, and other lighter posts, but as you said, great weight-to-price ratio for a pretty darned light post and it seems strong enough to me.